Battles on the Eastern Front 1914-18 - Suicide of the Empires (illustrated ed. 1999) [GREAT BATTLES]

On the outbreak of war in 1914, the armies of the western front soon became bogged down in the mud at Flanders. But on the wide plains and forests of Eastern Europe the three great Empires - Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary - grappled in a series of battles involving millions of men and hundreds of miles of front. Shortly after the outbreak of war the Russian «steamroller» had lurched into Prussia only to be hurled back amind the marshes of Tannenberg. For the next three years the fighting swung indeterminately back and forth. This work describes the campaigns which provoked the downfall of three great empires and left the world changed forever. On the outbreak of war in 1914, the armies of the Western Front soon became bogged down in the mud of Flanders and it is these events that many people associate most strongly with the First World War but its origins and the strategy which governed all but its closing months lay in the East. In the wide plains and forests of the Eastern Europe the three great Empires Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary grappled in a series of titanic but little known battles involving millions of men and hundreds of miles of front. It was the Germans, with their excellent equipment and intelligent leadership who dominated the battlefield, even when outnumbered. The Russian and Hapsburg armies moved across a truly Napoleonic canvas with huge masses of cavalry, infantry and baggage. Shortly after the outbreak of war the Russian 'steamroller' had lurched into Prussia only to be hurled back amid the marshes of Tannenberg. Later defeats were caused by the Russian revolution itself with the downfall of the Tsar and the mutiny of their soldiers. For three years the fighting swung indeterminately back and forth and Alan Clark in the Suicide of the Empires, first published in 1971, describes in clear terms the campaigns which provoked the downfall of three great empires and left the world changed forever. On the outbreak of war in 1914, the Western Front soon bogged down in the stalemate of trench warfare. On the Eastern Front, things were very different. The three great Continental empires, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia, became locked in a deadly struggle involving rapid advances by mobile infantry and massive cavalry battles.

Little known to Western readers, this campaign determined the fate of Europe and much of the world for the rest of the century. All three empires exhausted themselves and collapsed in 1918. The Russian collapse led directly to the rise of Communism, the German collapse to Fascism, and the Austrian Empire dissolved into numerous unstable states such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, whose status and boundaries are still causing violent conflicts today.

Bogen beskriver de store slag på Østfronten under 1. Verdenskrig 1914-18. Herunder skildres slaget ved Tannenberg, Grev Conrads (Østrigs) nederlag, de tyske sejre i Polen, Brusilovs offensiv og endelig Ruslands revolution og overgivelse. Ludendorff; Hindenburg; Hotzendorf; Kerensky Describes the campaigns, which provoked the downfall of the three empires and left the world changed forever.